Nokia releases Q3 financial results, Lumia sales fall to 2.9 million

Nokia has published its financial results for Q3 2012, which shows the interesting position the company has found itself in. Smartphone sales have fallen drastically, as well as net sales from the division. Likely down to the imminent Windows Phone 8 release and new Lumia family of smartphones, Nokia experienced a 56 percent drop in net sales. In Q2 the company shipped 4 million Lumia devices, a steep decrease indeed.

The company has shifted to operating profitably on a non-IFRS basis, however. It's noted the tough transition Nokia has progressed through. Not only has the manufacturer moved over from Symbian, but to halt future hardware development on Windows Phone 7 in favour of Apollo was expected to hurt.

Stephen Elop commented on the financial report:

"As we expected, Q3 was a difficult quarter in our Devices & Services business; however, we are pleased that we shifted Nokia Group to operating profitability on a non-IFRS basis. In Q3, we continued to manage through a tough transitional quarter for our smart devices business as we shared the exciting innovation ahead with our new line of Lumia products.

While we continue to focus on transitioning Nokia, we are determined to carefully manage our financial resources, improve our competitiveness, return our Devices & Services business to positive operating cash flow as quickly as possible, and ultimately provide more value to our shareholders."

The company's US volume figures showed a 50 percent reduction quarter-on-quarter. While we're eagerly awaiting the Lumia launch, positive signs have been seen at retailers across Europe with the Lumia 920 topping charts in the pre-order stage. Should interest remain high and orders be fullfilled, Nokia will see a sharp increase in demand and supply, which should make Q4 paint a brighter picture.

It'd be interesting to know how many Lumia handsets Nokia needs to sell per quarter to break even.
To put this into perspective, Verizon sold many more Android phones to its U.S. market this quarter (think it was 4 million or so) than Nokia sold Lumia's to the world.
While WP will probably carve out a 3rd player position over time, I'm not sure it'll happen fast enough for Nokia to survive.

Out of that 4 million android devices sold, can you break it down by the different OEMs? How many of that 4 million was from Samsung, Motorola, HTC, Sony, LG,etc. Its not fair to compare one company(Nokia) against the field. Compare them to other OEMs individually. Your comparison is not a fair fight.

The timing of the Lumia 900 couldn't have been any worse for a product. WP8 announced and new devices right "around the corner" of course sales would decline. I hope shareholders and the board recognize this before taking it out on Elop.

Wall Street will take it out on Elop. Nokia is one of the most hated companies listed. They represent a major threat to their beloved Apple. Quite frankly, Apple is in a much harder position than Nokia. Nobody is expecting Nokia to survive and they can pretty much do as they please. Apple on the other hand has to make their numbers. If Apple shows any weakness at all there share price will collapse and that will hurt a lot of fat cats.
A word of warning to anyone with mutual funds. Know who those mutual funds are invested in. One of the funds I put money in and out of has 12% of their holdings in Apple.

These numbers are not as bad as many "analysts" predicted they would be. Hence why I am not worried about the company. Their non phones businesses are doing very well, NSN posted record profit and is helping prop up the devices unit. The 920, and 82* devices will do much to improve the devices unit next quarter. Pre sales are going very well in Europe and I am sure that other markets will do well also. While it would be nice for Nokia to have stellar numbers in the center of the universe so that their image improves all I care as a stockholder is a return to profitability and Europe and Asia will help with that. I expect the stock to hit $5 sometime in 2013.

Also ordering a Del XPS 10 win8 tablet...XPS designs from Dell are fantastic. Wish they would have put out a new and thinner Dell Venue Pro. It was a excellent phone...and looked stylish (albeit a tad thick due to keyboard)

This is a very incomplete article. Nokia actually did much better than what was expected. Wall Street was expecting a $.11 per share loss. Nokia reported a $.07 loss. There cash burn was also significantly less than what was expected.
There feature phone, and Nokia-Siemens Network businesses did very well this qtr. NSN pulled in its highest profit ever. The Asha feature phones are also selling very well.
The smartphone market is a tougher nut to crack however. There is unfortunately no quick turnaround to that side of the business. Its one they will simply need to keep knocking at.
Nokia fortunately is moving towards profitability exactly as they have predicted. Once that happens they will be hard to stop.

Cyan 900 owner here (LTE locally) but lets be honest aside from their software efforts the Nokia devices are lacking except for cheap price. They were VERY LATE and the 900 is thick/heavy in showrooms, plus not on VZW. The 610 would be a good $99 pre-paid cutrate carrier device and 7xx looking especially small and dated but a good price. Where is the 4.0 inch affordable model? Totally stupid product line. Exclusivity will cut into total sales but until Verizon gets WP devices (and Nokia) sales of WP and Nokia will stay very low. Too bad the WP7.0 team (who all are all mostly gone thankfully - Charlie and Brandon especially) never understood that and Joe B. is playing the typical "wait it out slow as molasses approach" to market penetration (forgoing 50% of america on VZW/Sprint for an entire lifecycle of WP7.5 devices too. Still, the Lumia 900 was released in April, only 6 months ago and sales would be low in the waning months either way.

Fact is Nokia have done well in the US even when they were market leaders. So just coz they aren't doing well there doesn't mean they are doomed.
There have sold out online pre orders of the 920 in Italy and France. There nearly 1bn potential customers on china mobile and telecom.
They will sell more wp8 smartphones in the last 2 months of the year than wp7 in q3.
There will obviously need to sell a certain amount of wp8 phones for it to be profitable. Whether they can do that by q4 results who knows. But if the sell more than in q3 then its a positive.
There so many positives on the way that I can see Nokia returning to profitability as a group by q2 2013.

No Surprise here. Nokia Management is just real Stupid for not getting the Nokia 920 and 820 on all 4 carriers. If you want your devices to Sell well you have to make them available to all the carriers.. You can never limit your self to one carrier that's the dumbest thing you can do no wonder they have sales issues.. It seems like Nokia likes to shoot themselves in the foot allot..

well one carrier says I want take it if you give it to another.
so its not upto them to sell it on all the carriers.
to do that they should be in a position where consumers really want it (e.g. the iphone) then the carrier will have to accept not to lose customers and Nokia is not in that position and needs to choose the best partner.

[quote]Likely down to the imminent Windows Phone 8 release and new Lumia family of smartphones, Nokia experienced a 56 percent drop in net sales.[/quote]

Rubbish - there are maybe two phones in the world (or rather brands of phones) where the announcements of the next model is enought to depress sales of the current model - if people really think that there is surpressed demand because of the announcement of the Nokia 920 etc they are fooling themselves - they simply aren't a large enough part of the public psyche for that to occur - I can see fan boys holding off but general consumers who 'update' themselves on what's new by actually visiting stores when their contracts are up? Nonsense.

* Note - Let's be very clear what I'm NOT saying - I'm not saying either way if the Lumia 920 and similarly will be a hit or not, it's simply too early to tell.

Most consumers have no idea that there is a 920 around the corner or that WP8 is coming soon. Because they are due for an upgrade, their phone is damaged, old, cracked, or whatever, they walk into the store wanting what their friends have now or what they saw on tv and browse around to see what's available now. Compare prices and devices and leave with a new phone. It's just the dorks like us on tech sites like this drooling over 1/2" screen size increases and complaining about 2 mm thickness differences that are holding off until the next big thing drops.

Would the average consumer know or even care what "end of line" means? I don't think so. A majority of users don't bother updating their OS when it's available. Hell, I can't tell you how many times I've seen phones with multiple app updates waiting. Most buy what they see and like NOW.

Well this is odd. I just went to a bar and sat next to someone who had the same cyan lumia 900 as I. I just bought this phone less than a month ago and don't feel 'beautifully different" anymore. Well at least when 7.8 comes out everyone will think I have the 920. Maybe the sales figures are delayed.

This is just a confirmation that Elop was a good choice and WP plan will pay off. Their losses are already down from more than $1billion to $754 million.
This will no doubt raise their stock prices. Remember, analysts don't care about the phones, they care about the numbers and this time around number are a lot better.

My mobile contract does not expire until June 2013. I had not made up my mind which device and company to go with, also the hope that there would a few more devices available by then. But I'm gonna go for Nokia, i feel its my duty to help keep such an innovative company alive (bad move with Symbian though)

Well what can I say, I'm a hopeless romantic here. My first phone was Nokia and I'm banking my next one will be too. However, I looked through their financial report and knowing nothing at all about anything like this all I can see is a whole load of minus numbers which is definitely very scary to see.

I would love nothing more than to see Nokia bounce back from this, and as I say I'm planning to invest in a new Nokia WP8 phone - as far as I can see they are the phones with the most technological innovation with new camera and touch screen technology as well as iconic build quality. The only thing that I think they could have made a mistake with regarding their new phones is the pricing and availability especially for people in the US. I'm in the UK and with less than 2 weeks until the phones are rumoured to be in people's hands it's absurd to think that this close to products being launched the customers that want the phones are still in the dark about the very basic information they need to get them.

I don't know if this is some kind of strategy from Microsoft or Nokia or both or whether the carriers are mixed in with it somehow but the greater the transparency a business can offer the most trust and loyalty you'll get from your customers. I really hope that Nokia sell record amounts of these new phones because it's only ever going to be a good thing for WP, but they need to look at how they've released the phones this time and presuming there will be a next time, make the changes to keep the customers better informed in future...

US is the market where milllions of customers look to buy new smart phones every 20-24 months. This trend is only getting better. Also, success in this market can signal the rest of the world about the company's brand and the demand for its products. Calling it a non-important market is utter foolish!

Nokia has outperformed Analyst expectations with these numbers. The core company is making money hence the non IFRS profits. The losses are mainly counted towards restructuring costs which in Europe and especially the Nordic countries are very high. This also explains why share price is going up strong.
Nevertheless smartphone sales are dissapointing but taking into consideration that they have to ride on a dead platform aka WP7 this is expected.

According to many Nokia would not even have existed anymore. Nokia does and everyone will see sales will go up. So, your remark is more LOL. And more, the US is just a small part of the equation. China, Russia and India will make a much bigger difference then the US. That's common sense.

Did you know 82% of all statistics are made up on the spot? This statistic is just as valid as yours. Android outsells iPhone 2.5-to-1 across the board (that statistic is not made up), so I hope you're as happy with your delusion as we are with ours. :)

They will be just fine. America is a small part of their sales. In China alone, they have 600 million people on the network they are selling the phone on. That is roughly double the entire US population. You add in the rest of Asia and Europe and you see how small we really are.

Nokia makes good money with the network business. Even non-WP phone sales look OK. ~ 80 million units a quarter.
Hate to say this, but Nokia should drop their smartphone business before it is too late and concentrate on networks as well as on basic phones, perhaps also leave the US market for good -- it is only pulling them down, trying to meddle with those silly operators. They have never really needed North America for anything anyway.

Yes dear, Nokia should leave the same market that supplies their OS to them and ignore the oodles of people who have expressed interest so far because in your opinion it's too much trouble. I don't like ATT but they do an excellent job of advertising and cash is cash. They wouldn't have paid Nokia for exclusivity if they didn't think they had something special in the 920. Believe it or not, the people on here complaining about it are in the minority.

If older phones could get something better than 7.8, discounted Lumias would still be selling. Example wp8, missing features not supported by hardware: NFC, enterprise security, etc. New phones would still be appealing while not having to burn the old.
I've heard the generational shift in technology explanation like everybody else, but the lack of backwards support is lack of development time. I forget what ms video mentioned that this was an time based decision.

But I am worried about fragmentation. Perhaps the answer is out there, but will developers be able to 'easily' develop for wp8 and wp7? Obviously new wp8 APIs won't be available in 7, but applications that use C++ will never work in WP7. I'm concerned that once WP8 gets the spotlight, I'll stop seeing new apps for my existing phones. Microsoft already excused themselves for the generational shift since they don't have a huge market share with WP7.

It's sad, but true that there will be a sharp decline in apps. I'm still waiting for the API to be released so I can build my app ideas I've had for 2 years, that WON'T work on WP7 due to API restrictions.

I can see this changing positively if they would have released the Lumia 920 on all carriers simultaneously. Not doing so is without a doubt going to hurt them yet again. I just can't figure Nokia out! Hopefully things will change for them or the company will definitely go belly up. Sucks!!!!

They get PAID for exclusivity, and devices are still available from other retailers unlocked or sold via a 3rd party with a contract. Not in the US of course, but everywhere else. So they will be fine.

I doubt it's a matter of getting paid. AT&T is the US largest network and I am pretty sure that for Nokia to sell the LUmia 920 on AT&T the demanded exclusivity for at least 6 months. As it is likely AT&T would yield Nokia the biggest chance of selling in numbers on an exclusive deal they have little choice here.
IMO the only one to blame is the US telecoms system here. With each carrier basically sitting on their own little island with their own frequencies and used bands it's a matter of scale.

As we'd say where I used to work whenever someone would say something dumb..... "ummmm..... what?"
Verizon has the largest customer base, Verizon has the best coverage in more areas, and Verizon has "4G" coverage in 371 markets to ATT's 65 (or almost 6x as many).
What was that again?

The US is only 20% of the global smartphone marketshare. Nokia has always cashed in bigger on their European and Asian markets and the Lumias will be more widely available across the pond, where they have a greater chance at profitability. They're looking for a foothold situation in which they can build from; Hopefully, they get it.

Is that a real 20% or a 20% you pulled out of your back side? I've been curious as to where we actually sit... There are maybe 125 Mil smartphone owners in the US, and I heard 1 Billion in the world now...so I thought 20% was high.

I don't get this "being paid for exclusivity thing" either. It makes little financial sense to limit your device to one carrier (and therefore, potential customers) for a short term benefit while completely ignoring the long term losses.

Companies earn a profit by selling more at a higher profit - it is a simple equation. Nokia, at present, can't make a high profit on every device due to obvious reasons and they are killing their numbers with this carrier exclusivity too so I can't say I'm sure that their standing in the North American market will change drastically with the Lumia 920.

You don't know the details of the deal, so you can't understand. Without exclusivity the carriers won't bother to promote the product. Exclusivity is guaranteed for X amount spent on advertising and pushing the product (incentives to sales staff would be in there too). It's a win-win for both parties.
In Australia we have carrier exclusivity too, but it'll be released unlocked & off-contract at multiple retailers in due time.

You don't get exclusivity?
Easy.
You offer an exciting product to 4 parties (in the UK)
To get the exclusivity - you must BUILD VISUAL VOICEMAIL, you will let US CONTROL UPDATES etc etc Basically, for the exclusivity - Apple iPhone got its way on the terms of the contract.
Stimulated demand (a product I cannot get.. I want one...ahhhh.)
Then when demand is sky high, ask other carries if they want in - but keep the terms.

Apple were brilliant in this regard. Not only did they make a great device, but they also handled the legals and commercials and marketing brilliantly.
They are often the bits MS get so badly wrong. They are software engineers mostly, and dreadful at marketing. Although getting better.

I hope nothing can get worse than this quarter for Nokia if the next generation lumia's are released on time. There seems a lot of potential for the new devices, but for Nokia's consistent delay in giving concrete release date and prices.

Agreed, how many of us are holding out for the new WP8. It's the reason I didn't straight up buy one in July/August when my iphone crashed. I've been using my back-up Droid until they release Lumia 920. I'm thinking I'm not the only one.

Are you willing to buy it for a higher price? Or may be you should run the company as you seem to know more about economics and finance. Its very easy to find fault and tough to do the right thing (one's wish) in reality.

Well, I bought stock because I loved what I saw in the Lumia 800/900, and I was even more pleased when I saw the 920. As a stockholder, I seriously want to own a Nokia device, and that is the device that I want.
Being a Verizon customer, though, and living in an area where Verizon has outstanding coverage and ATT only has ok coverage, and Verizon has LTE and ATT has 4G an hour away, there is no way I'm switching to ATT. So needless to say, I'm not the least bit happy about the exclusivity agreement with ATT, especially upon hearing yesterday that it is to last six months. Then seeing this news this morning, I'm even less happy.
When I first heard of the ATT exclusivity, my gut reaction was to call for Stephen Elop's resignation. Within 8 hours, I was retracting that call, and deleting several angry tweets. I started watching the news, and hoping for a variant. It's now been a couple weeks that I've allowed it to sink in, and I've been trying to get other people to calm down as well.
Here's what my plan is now. If there is not to be a Nokia device, on Verizon, with the 920's camera including OIS/BSI, and the HD resolution of the 920's screen, and hopefully the storage, although I would reluctantly settle for a lesser storage if it has a microSD slot, by the first week of December, I will again pick up my call for Stephen Elop to move out of that corner office, and out of Nokia's offices altogether. But this time, it will not be a rash gut reaction, it will be following patiently sitting back and waiting to see if a variant is to arrive on the network that serves me best in my area. If I can't own a device and use it to its best ability, due to exclusivity agreements that lock out more than half of America, then I think the head of the company that allowed that agreement needs to go.
I think that is fair.

So when iPhone was exclusive to ATT for years that meant Jobs should've resigned? I am astounded by your overwhelming sense of entitlement. Verizon is 1 carrier out of dozens worldwide. If they didn't want to cut a deal with Nokia then tough luck - you should be complaining to Verizon. Nokia will happily sell to the other 90% of the world.

In 2 months time I will have 3-4 local retailers & carriers to buy from, as well as dozens of international online stores. I will have a glut of places to buy from. I couldn't imagine throwing a hissy-fit if my carrier didn't sell it (carriers are irrelevant) nor could I imagine baying for Elop's head if I don't get what I want.